


Re-education

by whiskeyandspite



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Conversations, Crack, M/M, very bad psychiatry, very pretty clothes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-15
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-13 07:49:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2142945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Perhaps, from the beginning?” Hannibal suggests, head tilted once more, one hand slipped from his pocket to gesture for Will to sit, as they normally would together, for their conversations.</i>
</p><p>  <i>“Perhaps if you explain to me why you’re here, why you think you are, we can both come to an amicable and collaborative conclusion as to what brought you.”</i></p><p>Sometimes you need to take drastic measures to get somewhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Re-education

**Author's Note:**

> A commissioned work for the [Hannibal-ACCA summer run!](http://www.gofundme.com/9hqvpc)
> 
> The prompt ran as follows:
> 
> _"Will catches a serial killer, ruining his shirt/jacket/whatever in the process. Hannibal lends him a spare, and when Will fails/forgets to return it, and in fact keeps wearing it, Hannibal realizes this is his chance to slowly but surely replace Will's wardrobe for the better. Hannibal takes steps to ensure the close encounters with killers, kidnappers, and muggers continue, and if he has to contract out to make it happen so be it._
> 
> _When it finally dawns on Will what has happened (hey, he's been busy catching killers, kidnappers, and muggers) he becomes so outraged he starts stripping off his clothes and throwing them at Hannibal. Which was perhaps not the wisest thing to do. Ideally this would end in sexytimes at the author's discretion."_

“You.” Will’s voice is harsh, aiming for venomous and hitting squarely between desperate and exasperated. “With your fancy words, your damned suits, what have you done?”

Hannibal holds the door a moment longer before stepping aside to graciously let Will in, despite his - very, very - rude and unscheduled arrival. He clicks it closed behind him, sets his hands into his pockets and turns to study the man fuming in his study.

Will paces, shoes no longer scruffy boots but almost-polished dark monk strap shoes, pants hemmed and pinstriped, a dark charcoal gray, tailored and hugging Will’s hips as clothes should, not as Will Graham had once thought clothes might.

A similarly dark shirt, semi-spread collar with two buttons undone. A tie, patterned, now loose from a still somewhat sloppy half-windsor, hangs just below Will’s belt. His jacket lies crumpled on the chair Will usually occupies, tossed there, uncaring. But despite that, Hannibal couldn’t be prouder.

For a month’s work, he has done very well.

Yet the man before him still demands an answer. Hannibal tilts his head.

“You’re upset.”

Will laughs, a harsh sound, far from pleased.

“World class deductions, doctor,” he says, gesturing in his displeasure. “How about another? Can you tell me why I’m upset?” He meets Hannibal’s eyes, his hair over his eyes before he flicks it away, not as long as it had been but windswept and messy, glasses set comfortably, not cutting off his vision here, between them. “Can you tell me why I’m here, on a Friday evening, in your office after hours, with a raised voice and a far from calm demeanor?”

“Bordering on hysterical, Will,” Hannibal confirms, and for a moment does not answer his question, but regards his creation again, a slow glance from his shoes to his hair, and Will’s eyes narrow further.

“Hannibal.” he says, voice lower, softer now, as he draws even breaths. “Tell me why I’m here.”

Hannibal’s lips purse softly and he ducks his head before taking a few pensive steps closer, further into his own office.

“You have taken to dressing differently. In such a way now as to cut a much more pleasing silhouette.” a glance, brief, and amused by the wrinkles in the corners of his eyes only, his expression does not change, “Perhaps the object of your new-found affections has not appreciated the wooing, and you’re distraught?”

Will takes a measured breath and closes his eyes, shaking his head and bringing a hand up to rub against the bridge of his nose under his glasses.

“Perhaps, from the beginning?” Hannibal suggests, head tilted once more, one hand slipped from his pocket to gesture for Will to sit, as they normally would together, for their conversations.

“Perhaps if you explain to me why you’re here, why you think you are, we can both come to an amicable and collaborative conclusion as to what brought you.”

The man in front of him slumps, draws his hand from his face and further, to tug his hair instead, before laughing softly, a much more resigned, less manic sound, than before.

“You and your games, Hannibal.” he sighs, hands between his knees, clasped, before he looks up, head cocked to mirror the way Hannibal watches him. His eyes narrow, Hannibal’s mirror, in amusement. Then Will licks his lips.

“About four weeks ago, someone tried to stab me.”

-=-

_Thursday. About four weeks ago._

-=-

“It’s not my blood.” Will’s tone is rough, more tired than angry, though annoyance clouds his brow and sets a sigh heavy through his lungs. He walks in when Hannibal admits him, grateful for the security of the click of the door. A comfortable space, open. Long since anything but ‘conversations’ between them here.

“I shot just short of my mark,” Will says, hands spreading wide in explanation. He brings one up to rub the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses and sighs again. “Punctured the carotid, the result, you see before you.”

And certainly, there is a result there. Will’s check shirt is sticky, tacky with blood. Some had clung to his neck, the drops there drying like a strange constellation of freckles. A thin smile, far from genuine, before Will holds Hannibal’s eyes a moment and then looks away.

For a while, they’re silent, Hannibal taking in the vision that is Will covered in blood and unharmed before him, and Will letting his eyes linger on the familiar surroundings and calm his heartbeat to something manageable. The man had tried to stab him, a vicious and quick attack, and Will’s reflexes had proven enough, today, to save him.

“Jack won’t let me go home,” Will explains at length, “Needs to debrief the team and get the appropriate paperwork filed.” his tone is dry, exhausted here, now, and Hannibal cocks his head.

“It is rather far to drive to Wolf Trap to change,” Hannibal agrees, watching the way Will’s shoulders flex in minor discomfort at having his intentions realized so easily by the man before him. “Perhaps I can lend you a shirt.”

Will snorts, turns an amused side-glance at the psychiatrist and then looks away.

“Was my pathetic unspoken plea to appear human in the FBI field office that obvious?” he asks softly, finding that the words bring a smile to Hannibal’s lips as well, genuine and warm, the way the corners of his eyes crinkle with it.

“You are not one to ask for help, Will, but that does not stop you seeking it.” Hannibal points out, walking past Will and further into the office, towards one of the wall panels that opens silently to reveal three shirts and just as many suit jackets to match, hanging carefully within. Will doesn’t even pretend surprise.

Hannibal selects the darkest, a cement gray, and spares Will the breath to decline a coat before closing the panel and returning to present Will with it. The profiler takes it carefully and nods his gratitude.

“I do hope you don’t start finishing my sentences, doctor,” he murmurs, “People may talk.”

“It is the folly of human nature to talk and say nothing at all.” Hannibal replies, smile still soft on his features. Will finds himself returning. He lifts the shirt, another nod in gratitude, and Hannibal gestures to the private waiting room for Will to change.

_“You’re in another today,” Hannibal notes, amusement in his tone, “Though just as well fitted.”_

-=-

_Back to the present for now_

-=-

Will glares, jaw working in gentle displeasure.

“Perhaps because the day after that I found another of my shirts mangled and you lent me this instead.”

Hannibal’s expression doesn’t change, but his eyes soften further in amusement. The first shirt had been a little large on Will, being Hannibal’s - the shoulders too wide, the cut unfitted. The next had been an estimate, and quite accurate. He’d wondered if Will had noticed, upon getting home that second day, after getting coffee - something far less sinister but no less irritating - down the front of his initial choice, that this replacement was meant for him.

It had been a mere side thought at the time, but then Will had worn the shirt again, perhaps comfortable in the way it settled against his skin, smooth and warm, perhaps simply because it had been the first he had seen in his closet that morning.

The thought of conditioning such choices further had simply been the next step.

“The reason for your ire is the shirt you’re wearing?” Hannibal asks instead, feigning innocence, amused when Will’s eyes narrow further before he sits back and brings a hand up to tap against his lips thoughtfully.

“I suppose that’s the start of it.”

“Always good to begin at the beginning of a life.” Hannibal quotes.

“Is this a new life?”

“Is it not?” Hannibal’s head tilts and Will drops his hand.

“That next Wednesday,” he continues, almost pointedly, “the target seemed to move below the waist.”

-=-

_That next Wednesday._

-=-

“Unfortunate but in this weather inevitable,” Hannibal comments, smile quirking only when he’d turned, reaching into the same panel that had produced - by this Wednesday - four new shirts for Will, for a pair of pants.

“Slipping on ice is common,” Will responds, displeased as he clenches his fist in the sodden, freezing fabric, holding together the split down the seam of one of the legs, “Slipping on ice being pursued by a man wielding a knife is something that only happens at the FBI.”

And only to him, it would seem. Someone not deemed well enough to be an agent, brought back for case after case that leave Will sleepless and no better to take on full agent duty. He hadn’t even been armed, the assault had come entirely unexpected near his car at the far end of the lot late that afternoon.

He had a class to leave for to teach in an hour. 

Otherwise he would not have come to Hannibal asking for -

“I just need something that fits, I’m sorry.” he takes the pants as carefully as he had every shirt issued to him, feels the fabric, the weight and quality of it. “Perhaps I should start bringing a change of clothes to keep at the office.”

“Nonsense,” a brief smile, calm steps to the back of the room where the glasses and decanter rest for use in the evenings. He pours Will a glass, does not get one for himself.

“Incidental singular events. Unfortunate but unlikely to occur frequently enough to warrant the effort.”

Will raises an eyebrow.

“They seem to certainly warrant your efforts.”

Hannibal’s smile is smooth and slow, like butter melting, and Will directs his eyes to the glass in his hand so he doesn’t have to watch as it warms him - feeling is quite enough.

“I am certain, Will, that were our situations reversed you would not hesitate to help me as I am helping you.”

Will laughs, a soft sound, and shakes his head.

“If our situations were reversed, you would not seek my help like this on the matter,” he gestures to the panel, now closed and almost invisible in the wall from whence the pants had come.

“I greatly appreciate the help, but infringing on your hospitality further would be exceedingly rude.” Will considers the pants again, fidgets with his glass before passing it back.

Hannibal’s smile thins but doesn’t disappear, and he gestures for the private waiting room for Will to change.

_“Unfortunate -” Hannibal starts._

_“Incidental singular events.” Will deadpans._

-=-

_Welcome back._

-=-

A silence between them, as Hannibal waits and Will resists the urge to continue, watching the pleasure this brings the other man, just listening to him, reliving the past this way.

“Perhaps not so singular.” Hannibal admits into the silence, and Will snorts, sitting forward again. The pants he wears now had been the ones Hannibal had provided for him that Friday. After Will’s clothes that he had indeed started bringing in to keep in his office mysteriously met a rather unfortunate end.

“I still wonder what incident,” Will stresses the word, “Brought about the discovery of my clothes on a laboratory table covered in hydrochloric acid.”

“Student pranks perhaps.”

“I teach psychoanalysis, Hannibal,” Will reminds him, “I teach students about the utterly fascinating study of insect activity in relation to the time of death of a body. I do not teach anything to do with chemistry.”

A smile, small, and it sets color to Will’s cheeks in both irritation and something else entirely. His jaw works, his fingers tighten where they’re threaded together.

“Tell me why I’m here, Hannibal.” Will requests again. The other simply swallows, splays his fingers to press over the expensive fabric of his coat before slipping his hands to clasp together.

“You are upset by the targeting of unnamed and unknown individuals towards your person.”

Will scoffs and Hannibal continues.

“Rightfully so, considering two of those incidents involved an attempt on your life.”

“Two?” Will’s brows furrow further, and he sits closer on his seat so sharpy he barely balances on its edge, “Two attempts, Hannibal - try eight!”

A raising of an eyebrow, an encouragement to continue. Will shakes his head.

“The tie incident.”

-=-

_Having to use it as a makeshift garotte to stop another beating him to death. It was unpleasant. The tie suffered. Will’s wearing the one Hannibal gave him in exchange with the shirt he arrived in, today._

-=-

“It is a practical item.” Hannibal offers, watching Will’s expression war between amused and genuinely irritated.

“And the other tie? The one I used as a tourniquet for two hours before an ambulance arrived?”

“Practical and versatile.” comes the response. Will just blinks and shakes his head. 

“I could have died.”

“You didn’t.” 

“Thanks to the tie?” a quirk of lips, a responding smile.

“The tie saved you from the worst of it. And you have started wearing them more often, I see.”

Will blinks, almost bewildered. “The worst of it? Do you remember the jacket, Hannibal, two weeks ago?”

-=-

_Two weeks ago._

_Will may or may not have been set on fire._

_It’s also the reason he’s had to cut his hair._

_He’s ok._

_And the hair looks good._

-=-

“Do not make me relive the reason I now no longer wear boots.” he shudders. Hannibal doesn’t make him relive it.

After a moment, Will shakes his head again.

“All of this, all of it, over and over, keeping me from sleep, from work, from doing anything but looking over my damned shoulder.” Will swallows, stands up to pace, hands up to run through his hair and pull the skin back enough to narrow his eyes. Then he stops, sighs, drops his hands and turns, accusing eyes on Hannibal again.

“Doing nothing but coming back to you, again and again, one way or another.”

Hannibal settles back, takes a breath and settles one leg over the other in a comfortable cross.

“Tell me why you’re here, Will.” he murmurs.

The reply comes in the loosening of a tie, barely parted lips and narrowed eyes. It comes with the flinging of the expensive fabric in Hannibal’s general direction.

“You did this.”

“Did I?”

“Every single thing from the first time I showed up in this office with blood down my front. You did this.”

Hannibal smiles, and tilts his head, says nothing as Will makes a frustrated gesture, brings his hands to the cuffs to undo the buttons there.

Piece by piece, shirt and tie and pants and shoes, one by one, Hannibal had replaced Will’s wardrobe with his own, and yet everything was tailored, everything comfortable and expensive. Will walked straighter, he took his time in the morning to do his hair, he held court in his lecture hall as he had rarely done before.

“I am here because I am upset,” Will says, tone mocking, voice growing louder, “I am upset by the fact that you did this to me.”

“How does it make you feel?”

“I just said I -”

“No, Will, how does it make you feel? All I have done for you, for this.” Hannibal turns a hand palm up and encompases Will’s entire presence in a gentle sweep down.

“Your obsession with material possessions nearly cost me my life.”

“You are not one to ask for help, Will, but that does not stop you seeking it.” Hannibal smiles, familiar words, warmer tones. “You sought, I gave. The contracts were never to end your life, merely that of your wardrobe.”

Will blinks at him, blinks again, and takes a step back before rocking himself forward again.

“You paid for this?”

“Well worth the investment.”

A laugh, first one, then several in a row, breathless and almost helpless, but not genuine. There is a desperate nervousness within that Will can’t hide even if he were trying to.

“You paid someone to destroy my clothes.”

“I paid for several people to make you more aware of yourself and your surroundings.” Hannibal responds, inclines his head, “How does it make you feel?”

Will considers, turns his sight inwards, to see, not just look. His posture has changed, his entire carriage. When four weeks ago he had walked to Hannibal’s office looking for sanctuary, today he had stormed in demanding to claim it as his own.

A shake of his head, a hand up to press against his eyes and Will makes a sound like a hybrid between a purr and a laugh.

“I would have been cheaper to ask me to dinner.”

“Perhaps now I shall,” Hannibal inclines his head, amused, “Now that I have dressed you.”

Will sighs, closes his eyes and just stands, breathing, allowing the anger to shift to surprise to slip peacefully to resignation and amusement. Hannibal gives him the space, leans to take up the tie Will had tossed his way, to undo it and set it over his own neck to do up again, a perfect double windsor.

“Dinner?” Will asks at length. Hannibal hums his acceptance.

“Dinner.”

“Ok.”

Will bends for his jacket, takes up his bag, and turns to leave.

“Will.”

A pause, slow to turn but eyes up when he does. Hannibal just holds out the tie.

“Perhaps tomorrow.” he suggests, “Late evening. I can cook.”

Will takes the tie a little sharply, but his expression is soft.

“So you tell me.”

-=-

_Perhaps that next evening. Perhaps late._

-=-

“Please,” Will gasps, arching up, hands scrabbling over the sheets beneath him, hair a mess and tugged by one strong, steady hand...

-=-

_...perhaps we should backtrack…_

-=-

Will wonders if Hannibal would make lasagne complicated, if he were ever forced to sink low enough to make it. Goat’s cheese instead of normal store-bought, crumbed not grated. Wagyu beef. Handmade and hand rolled lasagna sheets and a sauce made with enough spices and herbs to outfit a small market.

Whatever he’s eating now is exquisite, the presentation almost too beautiful to dislodge and yet he follows Hannibal’s lead to do just that. Small portions that don’t ever seem to end, that fill him comfortably without the possibility of leftovers - that would be rude. 

Will has had dinner with Hannibal before, but here he feels as though the man has outdone himself, simply for him.

Will, for his part, has done his best to look presentable. Combed hair, tailored jacket and silk tie.

And a shirt that Will can feel Hannibal trying to destroy with his eyes, when he allows them to linger on the check. The flannel. A deliberate twist just to have the man keep his attention on Will entirely.

Not that he had suspected it would waver.

In the kitchen, Hannibal does not let him help clean up, but he allows Will to lean against the counter as he works to prepare dessert. What it is, Will can’t even fathom, but he finds himself more than willing to abandon guessing when Hannibal reaches out to run his fingers over the offending material between the tie and Will’s skin.

“It feels almost as though an entire week was wasted.” he laments, but his tone is soft, warm, and Will swallows before he finds his lips curling in a smile.

“I own more than seven shirts.”

“And I have an unlimited budget with which to re-educate you, Will, do not tempt me to use it.”

The hand splays, presses warm to Will’s heartbeat, and then the man himself steps closer, and all Will can do is duck his head to look at the fine weave of Hannibal’s expensive shirt in front of him.

“And time?” he asks. A hum in reply.

“Time I have.”

Will bites the inside of his lip, raises his eyes.

“And desire?”

A low sound, almost a growl but deeper, a vibration more than a sound. Will tilts his head and feels his eyes narrow in response.

-=-

_Upstairs in the master room, Will finds himself unclothed, finds his ridiculous shirt thrown aside, his beautiful clothes folded away._

_He finds that he much prefers Hannibal’s lips to his skin, than silk. That he enjoys the feeling of the hot press of fingers more than even the most expensively tailored pant…_

-=-

“Fuck,” it’s a sigh, the word curled with a pleasing tilt of lips, a delightful shudder through Will’s entire being that Hannibal relishes, tastes, breathes in and memorizes.

“You have an utterly filthy mouth, Will, when you let it run free with pleasure,” Hannibal murmurs, drawing the tip of his nose up the center of Will’s chest, his lips following as he ducks his head just so. “What’s to be done about that?”

“You can fuck the coherency out of me.” Will suggests, breathless and pleased, one hand up to slip through Hannibal’s hair, beautifully tousled, now, tugged out of its previous order. Hannibal clicks his tongue, rests over Will with barely enough space between them for anything but their shared heartbeats and skin.

“Another re-education.”

“One I certainly hope you won’t outsource for.” Will grins, tilts his head for Hannibal to kiss under his chin, and thinks of how he still has several shirts for Hannibal to destroy, if the man felt so inclined, and how he would not miss a single one of them.


End file.
